understand your wish to get home and away from these terrible associations. We'll send you, bag and baggage, to the morning train.’
On retiring that night, Lesbia found that her morning’s cropper had hurt her more than she had supposed during the excitement of the eventful day. Her right wrist was badly sprained, her right hip bruised and stiff, and she required the assistance of Mrs Whyte’s maid to pack her portmanteau. Her first sleep was passed in a weird dream. She found herself on a line of high downs under a cloudy midnight, lit up by blood-red flames leaping from a brick-kiln. In that lurid glare she could discern the forms of men and horses lying about on the ground, and of hooded female figures moving about and stooping down among them. She woke up with a scared sensation, but turning on her other side, fell into a heavy and dreamless sleep until Susan knocked at the door with hot water at a quarter to eight in the morning.
After breakfast, Mr Whyte drove her to the station at Stratton, carrying the bicycle on the luggage in the back of the pony-carriage, for its owner was in no condition to ride it. ‘The rumours of a great reverse had already reached Bude before they started, and the morning papers, just come down to Stratton, confirmed the news.
‘Gracious!’ exclaimed Lesbia, holding out the Daily Twaddler at arm’s-length, ‘twenty-seven thousand hors de combat on our side; number of prisoners not mentioned; General Lord Gurth Redhill killed at the head of the cavalry, which was annihilated; the remnant of the disbanded army flying pell-mell toward Dublin; Admiral St George surrendered, with all of his ships that were not sunk—this is indeed worse than we had any idea of; there has not been such a disaster since Senlac!’
‘The proof of the Bungler pudding is in the national
